As A Bird, Like.

[rionaleonhart]

“Her name is Annie.” Awww, Sam still hasn’t given up trying to make his co-workers more politically correct.

...er, was that a pair of knickers in the police car, and if so what exactly were they doing there? ...oh, right.

Right, so Sam can’t get the door open, and the car falls apart in his hands, and Chris trips over a dustbin, and Gene (whom I am becoming increasingly inclined to call ‘the guv’) cocks up the car-bonnet-leap, and I think overall this is the most incompetent chase scene yet.

Er, flashing dressing-gown-clad drug dealer? What?

And Sam and Gene are going on another date. But of course. (Oh, come on, Gene, as if you actually want to discuss drugs procedure.)

Oh my, he’s actually seeing his 2006 world now. I don’t think that’s happened before, has it?

Is he ever actually going to tell Gene about the whole woke-up-in-1973 thing? Because I’m really rather curious as to how Gene would react.

Awww, Gene tricked Sam into buying him dinner because he was lonely! (I initially mistyped that as ‘lovely’. He’s lovely as well, of course. Deep down. Secretly.) That is so adorable.

And now Sam is hearing the radio go into the future with much crackling and channel-switching, and have I mentioned that a Life on Mars/Silent Hill crossover would work so very very well? Seriously, someone should write that.

So the doctors are testing coma-Sam’s responsiveness by playing the music and seeing if he reacts? Well, assuming that Sam actually is in a coma in the future. And it’s coming through into his 1973 world, and this is fantastic, because usually Sam’s moments of insanity and voices only occur when there’s nobody else around. Here he’s hearing the voices from the future in a place full of people, including Gene, and they can see what he’s doing, but not why. I’ve really been hoping for something like this. This is fantastic.

Well, Gene’s going to think he’s just a bit of a lunatic, isn’t he? “They said my name on the radio. They’re saying my name on the radio - you must have heard that.” (And we actually get to see what the world is like from Gene's point of view while Sam is having delusions. If Gene has a point of view that we can see... that means he must have his own existence in some sense, right? Right? I LOVE YOU GENE PLEASE EXIST.)

Ha, Sam is clinging to the radio and pressing all the buttons and he’s just so cute and insane! I love him! And Gene has to drag him away - “Come on, Sam. Come on. C’mon.” - and this is all so great.

Right, I’d sort of forgotten that there was a police case in all the joy of Sam/Gene and Sam being delusional. It certainly seems that the death is at least partially Gene's responsibility. We don’t often get to see a serious mistake on Gene’s part, and it looks like he might actually be feeling some guilt regarding it (“You all right, Guv? You look a bit... shaky.”).

Do the conversations between Sam and Annie ever end well? Sam seems to be quite the expert at putting his foot in his mouth. Maybe Gene is actually trying to save their friendship by dragging Sam away from her before he can say anything stupid.

Oh, God, I want to hug Sam and Gene and the flasher’s sister and I wish I’d stop getting these overwhelming urges to hug fictional characters because it is a very difficult thing to do.

Sam’s composure is starting to break down, and I think he really is suffering from very strong guilt. He wants her to know that it was their fault, but he feels that he can’t tell her directly, and he’s just so lovely. I adore him, and I feel so sorry for him here.

The sister really is very sweet. We may not see much of her, but I like her a lot.

I love it when Sam and Gene come to blows. I really do. I love it when they fight and argue and talk and have dinner and when one of them goes insane while the other watches in exasperation and I just love it when they interact in any way at all, really. They are such a wonderful team.

“He didn’t flash me.”
“Yeah, but if he had done.”
“She just said he didn’t.”
“But you’d have felt threatened. You know, disgusted. As a bird, like.”
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THAT AND I DON’T KNOW WHY. I think you may be grasping at straws there, Gene.

Ha, Gene’s careful skewing of the reports! Marvellous. I thought he was feeling guilty earlier, but now it seems more likely that he was just worried about the fate of his department.

Oh, internal organs. Oh. I could probably have lived quite happily without seeing that.

I think the only word to describe Gene’s incredible lack of tact there is ‘spectacular’. Wow.

“You like it here; you just can’t bear to admit it!” I wonder how Gene would react if Sam actually left? Well, if the most likely-looking theory is true, Gene doesn’t actually exist outside Sam’s mind and so probably would have a bit of trouble reacting at all, but you know what I mean.

And Ray walks in when Sam’s having his little freak-out in the bathroom. Annie was the only person who knew about Sam’s issues before, but in this episode his mental instability is becoming much more public, and I love it.

What just happened? What was Chris giving to Annie? What?

Ray really is annoying me quite a lot. Although I am rather fond of “Go shove your head up your arse”, for reasons unknown.

Gene is dismissing Sam? No! No, you can’t do that!

“Destroy his world, and then I can get back to mine.” AND YOU CAN’T DO THAT, SAM. NO. DESTROYING GENE’S WORLD IS A BAD IDEA. I DON’T CARE IF HE’S JUST A FIGMENT OF YOUR IMAGINATION.

Okay, so is there a single person in there who wasn’t partially responsible for the whole cover-up apart from Sam and Gene? And Gene promptly started trying to further cover up the cover-up. This whole situation really is a mess.

Right, so he’s snooping around in Annie’s locker. If he doesn’t get caught, I’ll eat my hat.

Of course. I was expecting Annie herself to turn up, but this is enough to absolve me from hat-eating. Which is fortunate, seeing as I didn’t even have a hat to eat.

Wow, that’s the third member of the Force that Sam has had some kind of physical tussle with this episode. (I would like to remind Sam that destroying Gene’s world is a bad thing to do. Also, Gene, likewise with chucking Sam out. Just - stick together, okay? Keep on being the awesome crimefighting bickering sexual-tensioning-it-up team that you are.)

The noises on that tape are hideously disturbing. Ergh.

Brilliant as that was, Gene, I’m not sure Sam is going to appreciate being used like that. (I didn’t really appreciate how clever Gene was before. I, er, did appreciate how much mysterious sex appeal he had, but I feel it bears mentioning again at this point.)

Would you believe that it’s only taken me until now to realise the true significance of the “You like it here; you just can’t bear to admit it!” line? I was just beginning to wonder whether Sam really wanted to return to 2006 or whether his 1973 world is becoming important enough to him for him to actually want to stay there, even though he doesn’t realise it, and then of course it hit me that we’d been directly told the answer to that earlier in the episode. This is just another thing to add to the thousands that I love about Life on Mars. I’ve been mainly watching these episodes as actual stories, rather than as products of Sam’s subconscious; I have got to watch them again and focus on what everything going on is actually saying about Sam’s feelings and state of mind.

I do feel sorry for Sam when the tape is destroyed, because he was so convinced that it would be his way out of there. But I can’t help wondering how he would have felt if it actually had sent him back to 2006. How is he going to feel if he gets out of this? He seems increasingly to belong in the 1973 world, even if he doesn’t think he does. Annie and Gene have become very important to him. He thinks that all he wants is to get back to his own reality, but I don’t believe that that’s true.

Awww, very cute little scene between Sam and Annie at the end there. Although I love Sam/Gene to death, I can’t deny that those two are adorable.


Episode Eight looks like it has the potential to be seriously awesome. I do hope that it is.